What Are You Reading Now?

[Art Vandelay]

I started plowing through The Brothers Karamazov this week. I will give my book report some time in June or July.

[clackamascoug]

Golf Digest, Feb 2010.

It was in the wicker basket, in the room with the single window, and a double back up fan.

[MarkGrace]

I started plowing through The Brothers Karamazov this week. I will give my book report some time in June or July.

2013?

[CardiacCoug]

Recently read The Lonely Polygamist and The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint -- both by Brady Udall.

These are excellent reads, especially for Mormons. The Lonely Polygamist will bring you to tears, a lot like The Kite Runner.

[DrumNFeather]

Just started "Nothing Like it In the World" by Stephen Ambrose, it's about the building of the transcontinental railroad.

[Art Vandelay]

2013?

If not 2014.

The scary part is even though my wife bought me the actual book, I found was able to download the ibook for free from iTunes. When I go to the larger font it turns into a 1700 page monstrosity. I'm quickly learning this isn't a breezy, read 150 pages a night American novel.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Just started "Nothing Like it In the World" by Stephen Ambrose, it's about the building of the transcontinental railroad.

My least favorite Ambrose book. Still worth reading, but it seemed like he just mailed this one in.

[bluegoose]

I just finished reading Into Thin Air by Krakauer last night. I liked it quite a bit; much more than Into the Wild, which I read over the summer.

Today I am starting The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom.

[DrumNFeather]

My least favorite Ambrose book. Still worth reading, but it seemed like he just mailed this one in.

The reviews on it basically said that it is not the best book on the topic, but I locked myself into getting it and I like Ambrose, so I went for it. Should've gone with the new one about the battle of little big horn.

[happyone]

finally finished the Washington biography. It is a good, readable book.

Some interesting facts

Washington as a slave owner did not believe in breaking up slave families. That resulted to too many slaves to run his plantations. He solved this by teaching some of them to be artisians and hiring them out for a profit.

He was a very ambitious man when he was young - He was the commander of the Virginia Militia at 23

Both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson became his political enemies by the end of his presidency

Currently reading Ken Folletts new novel - Fall of Giants

[EdmondDantes]

Just finished reading "Under the Dome" by Stephen King. Nearly 1,100 pages of build up only to peter out at the end.

Just started "The Passage" by Justin Cronin.

[SoCalCoug]

You know, with a one-year-old and a three-year-old, it's really hard to find any time to sit down and read. I'm currently reading Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings. I also have Tad Williams' City of Golden Shadow in the bathroom for when the Ipod is unavailable.

As soon as I finish The Way of Kings I'm going to read the next Wheel of Time volume that was published this fall.

[SteelBlue]

Recently finished The Good Soldiers. It is an account of the surge in Iraq told by David Finkel, a Pulitzer winning reporter for the Washington Post who lived with a battalion of front liners for 8 months. It's an excellent read, though won't bring you much happiness. These guys lived in a world that I can't imagine and the success of the surge had a huge human cost.

One of the more interesting portions of the book describes a day in which about 5 square blocks of one of the worst neighborhoods in Iraq were involved in fierce street fighting, sniping from rooftops etc... Utter chaos. You start to read about a chopper coming in to assist and soon you realize you're reading the story of the journalists mistaken for fighters that wikileaks supposedly broke. The funny thing is that this book came out well before the wikileaks video. Let me just say it will bring you some understanding of how such a mistake could be made on that particular day.

I strongly recommend the book to anyone who wants to know what our troops endured during the surge and who wants to have an idea of what our troops in Afghanistan will be facing. It also gives one an honest look at the costs to the Iraqi people. The descriptions of IED's are harrowing and I honestly don't know how those guys went out and faced them every day. I hope they're getting the help they need at home now.

[Green Lantern]

Just finished stage 5 of Operation: Harry Potter. Starting stage 6 today. Hey, this one's 200 pages shorter than the last one! Nice.

[happyone]

I finished Fall of Giants. It is the first book of a proposed trilogy covering the 20th centuary. The time period this book covers is 1911 - 1924. He goes from the Welch coal mines to the battlefields of the Somme and the Marne, from Russian immigrants in Buffalo NY to the Soviets in Revolutionary Russia. His characters are British, German, Russian and American - English/German aristocrats and Russian peasants/Welch miners. I enjoyed it. I think it is a step below Pillars of Earth and World Without End, but a little better than most of the rest of his stuff.

Next in the que is John Barry : an American hero in the Age of Sail by Tim McGrath. It is the biography of one of the two men who could arguably be considered the Father of the American Navy - John Paul Jones being the other.